How To Cure Panic Attacks While You Sleep
Sunday, August 15th, 2010A great and overlooked way to cure panic attacks is to focus on your sleep and to improve the quantity and quality of the sleep you’re getting. Try these 3 tips to do just that:
Okay, method number one is simply to eliminate negative thoughts that you have in your bedroom.
More worry and anxiety happens when you’re lying awake in bed than at any other time of the day. That’s pretty incredible when you consider it’s the place where we should be most relaxed!
I’d feel confident guessing that worrying in bed troubles you most when you’re trying to fall asleep when you first get into bed, in the middle of the night when you wake up, and first thing in the morning before you get up.
So what’s most critical in this situation is quickly stopping as much of your worrying in the bedroom as possible, and the easiest area to solve this problem is with the worrying you do when you wake up in the morning. The answer? Get up imediately, as soon as you open your eyes.
This is a very simple idea, but it’s amazing how much anxiety this will remove from the start of your day. Getting up before your mind has a chance to remember all the things it could be anxious about will give you a better start to the day than you’ve had in a long time.
As for the times when you wake up during the night and start to worry/panic well, this one’s slightly trickier. But there are things you can do! First of all, if you’re awake longer than a few minutes and you feel your anxiety increasing, get up out of bed. Being in bed in the silence will just make any anxiety you feel seem even worse.
Another great thing to do is to have a warm shower, or simply to splash your face with warm water. Or perhaps just wander around your home for a few minutes, possibly tidying a few things away. Then just go back to bed. This approach works because it recreates a completely natural way of going to bed.
This entire appraoch has to beat lying in bed for hours on end, with nothing to do but worry. And when you eventually go back to bed, you’re far more likely to drift off to sleep without any problems.
Okay, now time for the second way to get the kind of sleep that cures anxiety attacks, and this one is about creating and sticking to a consistent routine.
Sleeping problems of all kinds, not just those that are related to panic and anxiety problems, can be helped by making sure you adhere to the same routine every single day.
And yes, by doing nothing more than going to bed and getting up at the same times, every single day, your internal clock will go back to normal and your sleeping cannot fail to get better. You’ll also correct any problems with things like irregular hormone release, which can be affected by bad sleep habits.
I bet you know that feeling that you’re utterly burnt out, right? Well, that is sometimes a result of your adrenal glands being out of whack. One of the few ways to correct a problem like that is to get some good sleeping habits sorted out.
Starting from today, then, begin going to bed each night as close to the same time as possible. And, of course, get up at the same time each morning too. Just don’t undo all your hard work by sleeping in late on the weekends and losing your hard-earned new routine!
Right, now the third and final way to get better sleep, and this one is all about stopping all stimulants in the lead up to bedtime.
Many of the problems that I had sleeping were because of what I was doing before I actually went to bed each night. I was often watching TV in bed right up until the moment I turned out the light and tried to sleep. This is a very bad idea! The same goes for any loud or heavy music, and even for reading if the subject is heavy or extreme.
So something you should try to do right now is to completely stop anything that stimulates you in the final hours before bed time. Make this a part of a new routine you stick to before bed, where you try to slow things down.
So go out of your way to take it easy. act like you’re on a vacation without a care in the world. You know what relaxes you, so do that! Have a favourite bed time drink, do some light reading, sit outside in the fresh air if it’s warm. Anything to relax.
It may sound a bit obvious to give this kind of advice, but how many of us really give ourselves time like this? Even those of us who do don’t do it enough.
If you’re a bath-taker, then whenever you can take one right before you get into bed. Make it warm, but never too hot. A warm bath has been proven in many studies to put the body in just the right state for great quality sleep. So make this slow winding-down hour a new part of your pre-bed routine. It can work unbelievably well when you’re not sleeping.